


One Day / The Day

by icepower55



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AND PANSY COMES TO LIKE TOAST, AND THEN THERE WERE LETTERS, AND THEN THEY WERE GODPARENTS, F/M, HEA, Longing, OH MY GOD NEVILLE LOVES PLANTS, Parental Disapproval, Professor Longbottom, cliches / anti-cliches, lite angst, lovers from enemies, panville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:01:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icepower55/pseuds/icepower55
Summary: Despite his sense of humor, he hates cliches. He promised never to make her one.
Relationships: Neville Longbottom/Pansy Parkinson
Comments: 49
Kudos: 143





	One Day / The Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mightbewriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbewriting/gifts).



> GUYS, it happened. I wrote a rare pair. For one of my first (and best) fandom friends, mightbewriting.
> 
> [mightbewriting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbewriting/pseuds/mightbewriting) I promised myself I'd finish this two weeks ago, but here we are, belated, but built with love. I hope you enjoy this little gift. 
> 
> [Endless_musings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endless_musings/pseuds/Endless_musings/works) thank you for being an amazing beta & friend.

The day Neville left, Pansy split her life into two: the Before Neville, and the After. 

Before Neville, she dated Michael Wood, who went down on her with rabid enthusiasm and forgot both her birthday and her middle name. In the winter, she took Michael to meet her mother, who threw a jelly-legs jinx at him under the table and extended the date for when Pansy could access her trust.

“You’ve shown poor judgement, Pansy,” her mother had said. “If I can’t trust your judgement with men, how can I trust your judgement with money?”

After Neville, she moved, apparating back and forth from the flat they shared to the manor she now resides, carting bags loaded with the clothes she had worn for him. She keeps one relic of his, a dark-blue crew neck sweater that still smells faintly of spearmint and grass. It sits in her closet, the only thing she has left of him. The rest, she burned.

“I’m in love with you, Pansy,” he had said. “But I can’t turn down this opportunity.”

At night, Pansy creates elaborate fantasies about his life in America. Branded behind her eyelids, she sees him wrapped around busty blondes who adore botany. They bend over rickety greenhouse workbenches and let him fuck them with dirt under his nails. 

Sometimes she cries; other times, she thinks: _That’s a yeast infection waiting to happen_ and she feels marginally better. 

He sends letters, bi-weekly, like clockwork. They all start the same: _Hi Pansy. I’ve been thinking about you. Life in California–_ But she never finds out what life in California is like because she has Epsy hide them in the manor. One time, she went searching for a transfiguration textbook and a postcard slid out, Neville’s lazy handwriting confronting her: _Hi Pansy_ . _I’ve been thinking about you. I wish we could—_ . She had ripped the cardstock into two, splitting the image of kissing hummingbirds– _Really_ , _Neville?_ –cutting off their beaks.

“The entire point of _hiding_ these postcards from me is so that I never _find_ them. Do you understand?”

“But mistress never ever goes to the library. And mistress hates transfiguration, so Epsy thought it was a good hiding spot.”

She tells Daphne and Astoria this story over brunch, tainting the edges with humor so the sisters would laugh instead of looking at her the way they currently are. 

“You have to stop being in love with Neville,” they eventually say.

“I’m not _in love_ with Longbottom.” She shakes her head, blinking as her bangs kiss her eyelashes. “I detest that you’ve made such an accusation. Besides, the point of the story was that house elves are _worthless, useless, good-for-nothing_ –”

The waiter toddles over, tipping the teapot towards her. The gesture makes Pansy swell with indignation. “Can’t you see I’m telling a story? Are you so inbred and ill-mannered you cannot adhere to the most basic behaviors of propriety?”

She feels Daphne’s cool hand on her forearm, which only makes her angrier. A terrible roaring starts in her skull, chasing out the waiter’s apology.

“I’m leaving,” she finally says, standing up and knocking back her chair. “But I want to reiterate: I’m not in love with Longbottom.”

She swivels her gaze, from Astoria to Daphne to the petrified waiter. “Do you understand me? I am not in love with Neville Frank Longbottom. That is _slanderous_ and laughably untrue.” 

No one speaks. People in the restaurant blink at her, pivoting their gaze across her body and noting the disparity between her behavior and her appearance.

With a _pop_ , she apparates, thumb pressed against the diamond on her left hand.

* * *

The day Neville left, he left his new address on a napkin for her. He wonders what she’s done with it, considering she’s never written to him. He has a network of sources from which he hears occasional pieces of her life. From Harry, he hears about the Swiss millionaire. 

“Really sorry, mate.” Harry’s face had twisted in the floo, his features contorting with pity. “For what it’s worth. I hear he’s quite short.” 

Neville knows girls like Pansy do this. They marry men with four middle names and a hyphenated last name and live in manors staffed with house elves who cut and arrange fresh gardenias (an ugly flower, he can’t help but think) in the foyer. 

_I do not miss her,_ he makes himself write every night, willing the phrase into meaning as the words appear on the page; sometimes, most of the time, he starts drafting another postcard to her instead. 

He sends her all types of postcards: entwined hummingbirds, pop-art ice cream, pin-up models at the beach. He writes about his shitty little apartment in Berkeley, how the faucet always sprays, so he walks into class with abstract patterns of water splattered across his Oxford. He writes about his neighbors, who play loud rock music that makes him so angry and sleep-deprived he masturbates furiously just to release his frustration (he excludes that last bit). He writes about the pansies with which he lines his windowsill, the sable colored centers that mock him by reminding him of her eyes.

He considers writing about his students, how eager and clever they are. Too clever, perhaps. There are girls–women, really– who visit his office hours too often and linger too long, crossing their legs so their skirts rise up. He senses them hunting for photographs, staring intently at his fingers, seeking evidence of a girlfriend or wife.

 _I don’t have a girlfriend_ he would say. _I have a ghost instead._

He writes lots of things so he can avoid writing what he wants to say, which is: _how did you move on so quickly?_ And _do you think about me like I do you?_

 _Did you know_ he writes in his latest postcard _pansies are edible?_ He ends up crossing out the line, because it makes him think of how Pansy tasted, the dart of her impossibly pink tongue when she–

He has fantasies about the Swiss millionaire finding one of his postcards and suffering a stroke. He loves Pansy, but he also knows this about her: she could not love a man damaged by stroke. 

That is another reason why he should not miss Pansy, a reason his friends repeat frequently: she is a shallow person cursed by vanity. 

“I’m not trying to be an arse here, man,” Ron says, mouth hovering over the lip of his beer. “But Pansy may actually be a demon.” 

Anger stabs at Neville’s chest. He puts down his beer and addresses his friend. “Mate, I’m going to ask you respectfully to shut the hell up now, all right?” 

Ron’s fame–underscored by his constant presence on _Witch’s Weekly,_ soaring across the pages executing complex mid-air turns and darts–translates into a great deal of women who want to sleep with him, women of all shapes and sizes and nationalities. He meets Neville for pints with hickeys crawling across his neck, lips puffy and bruised. 

“I can set you up with someone,” he says, like they’re trading chocolate frogs.

Neville imagines Ron suffers from some type of chafing due to his vigorous exercise routines, but he also knows their married friends–Theo, Draco, Blaise–regard him with some lingering veneration. 

But this Neville knows: Ron has never been with a woman who simultaneously made him orgasm and cry. And because of that, Neville knows Ron is not truly a man yet. 

* * *

The day Neville left, he and Pansy–understandably–broke up. Except neither of them understands it at all: they fell in love, and then Neville was offered a fellowship in America. More precisely, they fell in love, and then realized how asymmetrical and asymptotic their lives would always be.

When Hermione and Draco made them godparents, Neville had experienced full-body terror at the prospect of “parenting” with Parkinson. He used to suspect Pansy as the kind of women certain men saw in their boggarts; now he is sure of this, but still, if this were true for him, he’d acquire a boggart just to see her one more time. 

The first time they watched Scorpius together, Neville spilled Hermione’s breast milk on Pansy. He stood there, stuttering, as she ripped off the blouse, barked at him for a towel, and then proceeded to incinerate the silk.

Together, they watched as the fabric smouldered, sending off sparks. Pansy had her pale arms wrapped around her torso, delicate wrists pressed against the red lace of her bra, which buoyed her breasts and made sweat bead against Neville’s hairline. 

“Are you going to stand there and stare, or are you going to give me your shirt?” 

Sometimes, Neville thinks if he had never seen her topless–seen the perfect hill of her breasts or smelled the way lavender clung to his shirt afterwards– he could have escaped unscathed. 

But Pansy doesn't think about the beginning when she remembers Neville; she thinks about the middle, after she had resigned herself to loving him. There are certain qualities of Neville she cannot forget, no matter how hard she tries: he likes using muggle kitchen appliances, enjoys American basketball, and hates having his feet touched. 

When he’s being especially perverse, he likes to be slapped across the face during sex. 

Regardless of how busy he is, he calls his grandmother every other day. 

Despite his sense of humor, he hates cliches. “That’s why I’d never buy you a diamond engagement ring,” he had said, kissing her knuckles. 

At night, when Pansy lies next to another man in bed, she closes her eyes and lets the phantom sound of Neville’s breathing lull her to sleep, thumb pressed against the 4.5 carat cliche on her finger. 

She walks by their old flat sometimes, stands across the street and remembers the rusted hinges on the front door, the cracked coffee table. Why didn’t these things bother her when she lived there? She should have been affronted by the meagerness of their lives. Except, it was theirs, and so she learned to love it.

The day Neville told her about the fellowship, Pansy was in the kitchen, eyeing the toaster and wondering how exactly it worked. 

“I have news,” he said.

She _hmm_ ed, waiting for him to speak, waiting for the _ping_ of her breakfast. 

“I’m being offered a research fellowship. In America.”

Her meal popped up, the edges blackened. How did he always manage to get it so perfectly while she always burnt hers?

“It’s in California.”

She reached for a plate, for a butter knife. He takes trips frequently. She didn’t understand his fascination with dirt, but she respected his passion. 

“When will you be back?” she asked, offering him a buttered slice. She had scraped off the black bits, but kept the crust: the way he liked it. 

“It’s for a year, Pans.”

“Oh.” She put down the offering. “You’re relocating?”

He laughed then, uneasy, the corners of his mouth pulled tight. “It would cost a fortune to make that many international portkeys.” 

She picked the knife up again, slid it through her piece, first diagonally, then across, until the toast collapsed into neat little triangles. “So this is goodbye, I suppose?” 

He said nothing, stood planted by the doorway, shoulder pressed into the wood. 

“Are you not going to say anything, Neville?” 

He didn’t, but here’s what he thought: last month, he told her he was visiting nan and went to see a flat in Berkeley instead. He met the professor he’d be working under, and the neighbors he would come to hate. He tried to imagine Pansy here, living like a muggle for a year, her life on hold so his could gain momentum. He knew he would never ask that of her, because he made a promise once: he would never make her a cliche. 

During their breakup, she’d taken him to their bed, one last time. She let him hold her hips, press his face against her shoulder. She felt him shudder above her, mouthing at the juncture of her neck. While he twitched inside of her, she said: “I hope you never love a woman the way you’ve loved me.” And when he disentangled himself from her, he kept his face turned. 

* * *

The day Neville left, Pansy called her mother for the first time in a year. Pansy now has a fiancee; and in a week, she will have access to her trust. 

Luca and her live in his enormous manor, which has a barn filled with exquisite Arabian racehorses, their coats so glossy Pansy almost feels envy. As an early wedding gift, Luca had the gardens redone and a sprawling maze constructed in the center. The first time they fucked, he asked for a complicated game of hide-and-go-seek: she breadcrumbed clothing while slowly stripping and calling out to him from within the hedges. 

Pansy spends most days with her mother and mother-in-law, poring over wedding details as they sit in the solarium, shoulders brushing against a backdrop of gardenias, hyacinths, and roses. When she needs a moment alone, she escapes to her closet, a cavernous room the size of the entire apartment she once shared with Neville. Inside, she sits in the center, wrapped in a fur blanket, and daydreams about dressing the children she knows she will need to bear for Luca. 

Luca and her speak in bland pitches reminiscent of her parent’s conversations. They sit across from each other at dinner, and he tells her about his day, and sometimes she is actually interested. Once married, Pansy will revert much to her girlhood self; she will never worry about money, and the focus of her obligations will be on social events and childrearing. He never asks about her _before_ , and she never offers. 

She does certain things for him that are permutations of her past: she makes him toast using the metal muggle box; she trails her fingers against the nape of his neck while kissing; she calls him “darling” and levitates him to bed when he’s fallen asleep downstairs.

But there are other things–private, secret things–she doesn’t share: She keeps her eyes closed while going down on him, she doesn’t tell him she likes to be choked, she sleeps with her back turned to him. 

After her mothers leave for the day, she spends much of her time alone. When Neville infiltrates her thoughts too deeply, Pansy changes into a pristine, white bikini and walks into the garden, toeing the edge of a pool. Then she tilts her body forward, arms carving water as she plunges in, eyes wide open, willing herself to see how close she can skim against the bottom. 

* * *

The day Neville left, he promised he would never do something like this; but here he is, planless, aimless, arriving in London on the day of Pansy’s wedding. 

He lands in his Pansy’s room, suit rumpled, arms wrapped around a box that _clinks_ as he adjusts his appearance. His portkey—a porcelain keychain shaped like a petal— _thunks_ out of his hand and onto the floor.

Her reflection meets his gaze; she doesn’t turn from her spot in front of the mirror. “I was wondering if you’d kept the portkey I made you.” 

“I’ve kept everything you’ve ever given me.”

At this, she turns and scoffs, a sly, almost shy, sound. He should feel more surprised at her lack of surprise towards his sudden presence, but Pansy has always had an uncanny ability to predict his next move. 

“Hello Neville.”

“Hello Pansy.”

“Have you come to give me a wedding gift?” She nods towards the ground, at the sagging brown box. 

From outside, the sound of the party drifts in, laughter ringing out against orchestral music. 

He flushes. Why didn’t he think to package it better? He never thought about these sorts of things. 

“Something of that sort,” he finally answers. He picks up his offering, feels the damp bite of the cardboard, hears the chime of clay striking together. As he moves closer to her, he lets himself see her: dark hair pinned back by a collection of gems, matched to the color of her eyes; lavender-taupe dress, with sleeves made of mesh and flowers stitched into the translucent neckline; red lipstick and white-tipped nails, eyes lined soft grey.

“You make a beautiful bride,” he says, and then: “I’m surprised you decided to have the wedding at your family home.”

“Well, I had to accommodate some traditions, considering Luca and I moved in together before the wedding.” 

He clears his throat. He should feel more shame than he does in this situation. Instead, he says, “I came to give you something.” He picks up the box again, tilts it towards her

“You got me...pansies? A touch on the nose, no?” 

He overlooks the disbelief in her voice, the sharp jab of humor. “They’re from my bedroom.” He blushes, coughs, begins again. “I got them when I moved in. I keep them on the window facing my bed, the first thing I see every morning.” 

He hands her a pot, carefully wiping the bottom with his sleeve so dirt doesn’t land on her. “Pansies are one of the most overlooked flowers.” Their fingers touch as she grasps the clay base. “But they’re wonderfully versatile and deceptively strong--largely unbothered by disease or insects. A flower for all seasons.”

He’s rambling, and he’s not sure what he’s trying to say. She’s holding the pot gingerly, with both hands, as one would hold an urn. 

“They’re also edible,” he says. and then he trials off, focusing on the flutter of purple petals as a breeze slants through the window. “They’re rather minty, actually.”

He’s staring above her head, listening to his heart assault his chest cavity. A beat passes, and he hears the _clink_ of her putting down the pot. 

“What are you trying to say, Neville?” 

“I’m–Congratulations, Pansy.” He runs a palm through his hair, recently cut, shorn towards the back, the way she liked. “I hope you two are very happy together.” 

He reaches into the box. “This one is my favorite.” He slides his finger over the velvet petals. “The center...it reminds me of your eyes.” 

She’s staring at him, mouth parted, revealing the rounded tips of her teeth. A furrow has formed between her brows, and he wants to reach over and smooth it with his thumb.

“I’ll leave you to it then.” He takes a step back, watches her body twitch–slight, almost imperceptible–before stilling. If she says something, he will stay, but she stays mutes, and so he goes. 

* * *

The day Neville left, they both took inventory of the things they would never experience again: the creek behind the Parkinson manor is one such thing. 

Neville’s feet carry him there through muscle memory; she showed him this place once, the disastrous time she took him home to meet her parents. He spies the calm water and slides his pant legs up as he settles against the bark of an English oak, shoes dipping into the muddy ground. 

Back in her room, Pansy rifles through the box, exploring the eight flowers—all individually potted—he’s brought her. From one, she steals a dark, inky purple petal and places it on her tongue, closing her mouth around the foreign object. As she chews, she thinks about the middle terrain of her life she had ripped out, the _During Neville_ sequence she had tried to erase. He’s right: it does taste like mint. 

Idly tossing pebbles into the creek, Neville thinks about what he had wanted to accomplish with his grand gesture. He had thought of a speech; it wasn’t at all like what he ended up saying. _Pansies represent the thoughts of lovers. I think of you every day, Pansy._ But even he knew it was both too much and not enough. What did he think would happen? This is exactly the type of life he knew Pansy would secure. 

Looking out the window, Pansy glances at the guests mingling below, the people who will soon bear witness as she swears her life to another. _I do I do I do_ she repeats to herself as she walks around the room. She sits on her bed, remembering the times she snuck Neville in, before they moved in together, before she thought she loved him. A knock interrupts the quiet, three taps, cordial but firm: her mother. Pansy gets up, smoothes down her dress, and looks in the mirror once more. _Deceptively strong,_ she thinks. _Largely unbothered by disease or insects._

Neville leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, focusing on the way his veins light up as the sun drifts over him. He thinks of the last time he was here, picturing the splay of her dark hair against tree bark, the murmur of her kisses, the sharp drag of her nails. Soon, he will get up, dust himself off, and reach into his pocket for the return portkey he hoped not to use. He will return to his apartment in Berkeley and review his lesson plans for tomorrow. At night, he will sit in his bed and stare at his empty windowsill, but he’s still not sure what he will feel then. He hasn’t thought that far. 

He’s cataloguing his next few hours when a shadow passes over him; his eyes are closed, but he hears the soft crunch of leaves underfoot. 

“I’m willing to wager yours was the worst wedding gift out of the bunch, though I haven’t had a chance to look through the rest.” 

He keeps his eyes closed until he hears the soft _thump_ of her sitting down, feels the scratch of her dress. She sits parallel to him, up against their now shared backrest, eyes forward. 

His words clot, congealing in his throat. His mouth hangs open as he stares at her, willing himself to speak. 

“The speech was uniquely awful as well.”

“I lost my train of thought when I saw you.”

A small quirk of her lips. “Do you do that often, Longbottom?”

There are a thousand things he can say, a million phrases of levity, but instead he slides his hand into hers and squeezes. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes with you, Pansy.”

“I suppose you have.”

“But you came.” He means it as a question, but it doesn’t come out as such.

The opposite corner of her lips twitch up. “I didn’t want to be a cliche.” 

He could apologize then, but that’s not what she’s here for. A beat passes as he studies her. Her lipstick has faded, a strand of hair has slipped from its confinement. There’s a thin sheen of sweat glossing her forehead, like perhaps she ran here, though he knows a Parkinson does no such thing.

Except, looking at her, he thinks, perhaps he doesn’t know her as well as he thought. Is this Pansy—the one who just left her Swiss millionaire wedding, the one who is somehow sitting in the mud with him—really the same woman he thought wouldn’t be able to stomach a broken faucet? 

She squeezes his hand back, a quick pulse of her fingers over his.

Perhaps he had gotten it wrong. Perhaps he now finally has the chance to fix it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended.


End file.
